


Idolatry

by Argenteus_Draco, Nemonus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Loss of Limbs, Pre-Movie(s), Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-22 23:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6096828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argenteus_Draco/pseuds/Argenteus_Draco, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how it feels to be Ben Solo, right now: You pace and you think about what weapons are for, and about the careful line your parents always draw between respecting your grandfather and revering him. You think about Luke’s stories of seeing the back of his own hand peeled open, and you think about what you and Darth Vader have in common.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idolatry

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks and apologies to Matthew Stover.

This is how it feels to be Luke Skywalker, right now:   
  
You think it was an accident, at first. Things happen in a building full of half-trained Force servants, even if there are far, far fewer of them then there were in the days of your father. You smell the scorching, and later, imagine that you heard a sound like a long fall and a wet bundle hitting the floor.  
  
Then you’re looking at the metal grating of your commlink and Leia’s voice is coming through, incredulous and and fragile.   
  
“He did what?”   
  
Ben is behind you, on his knees. He didn’t expect the pain, maybe, was blindsided by the staring shock that comes after. You’ve already done what brute-force healing you can, and a medical droid is coming. Ben doesn’t have the bunk on the Falcon to retreat into, doesn’t have the web of tubes and wires that Leia wrapped around you after you fell from Cloud City’s ductwork. Ben is staring at the floor. You kicked the lightsaber away, then planted your foot on it.  
  
You tell Leia.  
  
She does you the courtesy of telling the truth first, because she is your sister and she knows that you know how your family wears their masks: on the outside, onyx or silver and bright, so bright. Behind the masks come the voices, come the truth, so Leia’s second burst of words is all politician-Leia, after Skywalker-Leia has swung her sword and screamed.  
  
First, softly: “You were supposed to take care of him.”   
  
You close your eyes and hear Ben sob, once. The medical droid is in the hall, and the buzzing brings you back long enough to hear politician-Leia.  
  
Second: “This doesn’t change anything, Luke. I have to broadcast to the Senate hearing in an hour and then I’ll come over and see you, see both of you.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“Did he tell you why, Luke? Did he say anything to suggest a motive, or, we knew he was unhappy, but —“  
  
“We’ll both speak to you when you get here, Leia. I don’t think it was anything any of us could have done.”  
  
Do you believe that?  
  
Leia seems to.  
  
She goes quiet. Says, “I’ll see you soon,” like she’s standing at the bottom of a pit and he’s above her on the gantry. You tell her you love her, because if for nothing else you can be so, so responsible for that.   
  
You turn around and find that the medical droid has wrapped the wound in white bandages and hidden the hand. _Force_ , how long were you just standing there? Because he hasn’t moved, Ben’s back is still to you.   
  
You wait.   
  


* * *

  
  
“You’re his _hero_ ,” Leia used to tell Luke, and he has spent the better part of the last ten years trying to impress upon Ben Solo that a Jedi does not idolize; that a Jedi seeks to better himself, not to become someone else.  
  
“I wasn’t his hero,” he tells Leia, as they stand in the pelting rain outside the training halls. He needs to tell her this now, before they enter the room where a medical droid is seeing to Ben Solo’s injuries, where Ben is screaming, crying, pleading for the correct prosthetic to be fitted to his wrist in place of his amputated hand. The shouting stops abruptly. The droid must have sedated him. (That’s in it’s programming, along with installing the newest, most sensitive technology, not something scavenged from the days of the Old Republic.)  
  
(How did Ben even come by it?)  
  
Leia’s expression is hard. She’ll be Ben’s mother in a moment, but now she is still a general. “What do you mean?” she asks, but he has no answer that she will believe. She has to work it out for herself, and he gives her the time to do it. Rain runs down her waterproofed cloak, soaks into his hair and robes. Her eyes dart to his side, to his gloved hand, and he can practically hear the thoughts tumbling through her mind as she attempts to sort them out. Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly as she comes to her conclusion.  
  
“Vader?” she asks, breathlessly.   
  
Luke nods silently, though he thinks _Anakin_. He doesn’t know how much of his own roiling emotions Leia can sense in turn.  
  
She squares her shoulders and pushes past him to the door. “No,” she says firmly. “No, _it isn’t true_.”  
  


* * *

  
  
This is how it feels to be Ben Solo, right now:   
  
You have been given enough painkillers to knock out a bantha, so the pain doesn’t matter, as much. You’re not sure what does, now. You had wanted to make yourself into the right shape, wasn’t that it? You had learned that the recipe for success was to be a goodJedistrongJedi or to be dark and cruel and to fill up the world with all your dark cruelty, and so you picked the one that you were good at, didn’t you?  
  
Is that even your voice? Is that even your face, crying, _father, please?_  
  
You just wanted to be like him.   
  
Vader was strong, Vader had the right of it - make people feel fear, and they would shuffle into line. Luke’s story, the one about the farm boy in the desert, was backwards: it was right for things to end in sand and wastes, in hard living for those who would not embrace their own hard lives. It was right for stories to end in burning, and right now, Ben Solo, your story is ending.   
  
The hero ended up in the desert instead of starting there, because the hero never knew how to hold a fleet together.   
  
The medical droid has stuck something on to the end of your hand: a ring first, and then the complex machinery of the fingers. It has told you, in soft, certain words, that you could look away from this part if you wanted to, young Jedi. You don’t, of course.  
  
Are those even your thoughts? That’s your hand, though, flexing in the control of the droid. You haven’t felt the searing pain and prickling that means the nerves have been attached, yet. You’ve read about this. You planned and you researched for two entire hours. You know how it should work and how it doesn’t always work, and how it worked differently just one generation ago.  
  
You wanted to be able to see all the workings and the rust. Finding that, finding the style that suited you, was the hard part.  
  
You paced and you thought about what weapons were for, and about the careful line your parents always drew between _respecting_ your grandfather and _revering_ him. You thought about Luke’s stories of seeing the back of his own hand peeled open, and looking at Vader.  
  
The angle was awkward. There was no lightsaber _form_ for this, so in the end it was more like slicing bread: scoop down with the middle of the knife and then press inward, so that the blade touches the floor a little bit, leaving a flaking black scar.   
  



End file.
